The deathly pallor had, however, begun to give place to a more natural hue, and as the minutes pa.s.sed his breathing gradually grew less distressed. Once more his eyes opened, and he stared into Avery"s face.
"Help me--to sit up!" he commanded.
They did their best, he struggling with piteously feeble efforts to help himself. Finally he managed to drag himself to a leaning position on one elbow, though for several seconds thereafter his gasping was terrible to hear.
Avery saw his lips move several times before any sound came from them. At length, "Send--that boy--away!" he gasped out.
Avery and Ronald looked at each other, and the boy got to his feet with an undecided air.
"Do you hear? Go!" rapped out Sir Beverley.
"Shall I, Avery?" whispered Ronald.
She nodded. "Yes, just a little way! I"ll call you if I want you."
And half-reluctantly Ronald obeyed.
"Has he gone?" asked Sir Beverley.
"Yes." Avery remained on her knees beside him. He looked as if he might collapse at any moment.
For awhile he lay struggling for breath with his face towards the ground; then very suddenly his strength seemed to return. He raised his head and regarded her piercingly.
"You," he said curtly, "are the young woman who refused to marry my grandson."
The words were so totally unexpected that Avery literally gasped with astonishment. To be taken to task on this subject was an ordeal for which she was wholly unprepared.
"Well?" he said irritably. "That is so, I believe? You did refuse to marry him?"
"Yes," Avery admitted, feeling the hot colour flood her face under the merciless scrutiny of the stone-grey eyes.
"But--but--"
"Well?" he said again, still more irritably. "But what?"
"Oh, need we discuss it?" she said appealingly. "I would so much rather not."
"I desire to discuss it," said Sir Beverley autocratically. "I desire to know--what objection you have to my grandson. Many women, let me tell you, of far higher social standing than yourself would jump at such a chance. But you--you take upon yourself to refuse it. I desire to know why."
He spoke with a stubbornness that overbore all bodily weakness. He would be a tyrant to his last breath.
But Avery could not bring herself to answer him. She felt as if he were trying to force his way into a place which regarded as peculiarly sacred, from which in some fashion she owed it to Piers as well as to herself to bar him out.
"I am sorry," she said gently after a moment, "but I am afraid that is just what I can"t tell you."
She saw Sir Beverley"s chin thrust out at just the indomitable angle with which Piers had made her familiar, and she realized that he had no intention of abandoning his point.
"You told him, I suppose?" he demanded gruffly.
A faint sense of amus.e.m.e.nt arose within her, her anxiety notwithstanding.
It struck her as ludicrous that she should be browbeaten on this point.
She made answer with more a.s.surance. "I told him that the idea was unsuitable, out of the question, that he ought to marry a girl of his own age and station--not a middle-aged widow like me."
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Sir Beverley impatiently. "You belong to the same generation, don"t you? What more do you want?"
If he had slapped her face, Avery would scarcely have felt more amazed, She gazed at him in silence, wondering if she could have heard aright.
Sir Beverley frowned upon her fiercely, the iron will of him scorning and surmounting his physical weakness.
"You"ve got nothing against the boy, I suppose?" he pursued, with the evident determination to get at the truth despite all opposition. "He has never given you any cause for complaint? He"s behaved himself like a gentleman, hey?"
"Oh, of course, of course!" Avery said in distress. "It"s not that!"
Sir Beverley frowned still more heavily. "Then--what the devil is it?"
he demanded. "Don"t you like him well enough? Aren"t you--in love with him?" His lips curled ironically over the words; they sounded inexpressibly bitter.
Avery"s eyes fell before his pitiless stare. She began with fingers that trembled to pluck the primroses that grew in a large tuft close to her, saying no word.
"Well?" said Sir Beverley, with growing impatience.
She kept her eyes lowered, for she felt she could not meet his look as she made reluctant answer. "No, it is not either. In fact, if I were a girl--I had not been married before--I think I should say Yes.
But--but--" she paused, searching for words, striving to restrain a rising agitation, "as it is, I don"t think it would be quite fair to him.
I don"t know if I could make him happy. I am not young enough, fresh enough, gay enough. I can"t offer him a girl"s first love, and that is what he ought to have. I so want him to have the best. I so want him to be happy."
The words were out with a rush, almost before she was aware of uttering them, and suddenly her eyes were full of tears, tears that caught her off her guard, so that she had neither time nor strength to check them. She turned quickly from him, fighting for self-control.
Sir Beverley uttered a grunt that might have denoted either surprise or disgust, and there followed a silence that she found peculiarly difficult to bear.
"So," he said at last, in a tone that was strictly devoid of feeling, "you care for him too much to marry him? Is that it?"
It sounded preposterous, but she was still too near tears for any sense of humour to penetrate her distress. She felt as if he had remorselessly wrested from her and dragged to light a treasure upon which she herself had scarcely dared to look. She continued feverishly to pluck the pale flowers that grew all about them, her eyes fixed upon her task.
With a growling effort, Sir Beverley raised himself, thrust forward a quivering hand and gripped hers.
Startled, she turned towards him, meeting not hostility but a certain grim kindliness in the hard old eyes.
"Will you honour me with your attention for a moment?" he asked, with ironical courtesy.
"I am attending," she answered meekly.
"Then," he said, dropping all pretence at courtesy without further ceremony, "permit me to say that if you don"t marry my grandson, you"ll be a bigger fool than I take you for. And in my opinion, a sober-minded woman like you who will see to his comfort and be faithful to him is more likely to make him happy than any of your headlong, flighty girls."
He stopped; but he did not relinquish his hold upon her. There was to Avery something oddly pathetic in the close grasp of those unsteady fingers. It was as if they made an appeal which he would have scorned to utter.
"You really wish me to marry him?" she said.
He snarled at her like a surly dog. "Wish it? I! Good Heavens above, if I had my way I"d never let him marry at all! But unfortunately circ.u.mstances demand it; and the boy himself--the boy himself, well--"
his voice softened imperceptibly, rasped on a note of tenderness, "he wants looking after; he"s young, you know. He"ll be all alone very soon, and--it isn"t considered good for a man to live alone--not a young man anyway."